Welcome to “the festival within the festival!” We at PDX Playwrights are honored to uphold our reputation for robust creativity with an outstanding offering of new short dramas and comedies in the 2022 Fertile Ground Festival of New Works.
PDXP has an entirely new pre-recorded, virtual program for Fertile Ground 2022, continuing to showcase the storytelling talents of Portland playwrights. As with 2021, COVID-19 pandemic restrictions prompted us to sustain our capacity to make relevant and entertaining theater together, even in challenging circumstances.
We will be contributing two timely programs of short works for the Fertile Ground Lunchtime Series this year. The Festival runs Thursday, January 27 through Sunday, February 6, 2022. Our Fertile Ground events will “drop” at noon Friday, January 28, and noon Friday, February 4.
Furthermore, many playwrights who in the past have brought works to our table are independently producing their own full-length works in the festival this year! We encourage you to support them and the festival.
All PDXP events will be viewable FREE on the PDXP YouTube Channel.
The Programs
PDXP Short Plays
Noon Friday, January 28, 2021
Produced by Alisha Christiansen and Amanda Kelner
PDX Playwrights is proud to present this year’s lineup of 10-minute plays, featuring original works from five local playwrights. Recently, we’ve been searching for the answers to life’s big questions, and we’ve found the single most important life lesson for our theme this year: Love Over Everything.
Featuring: Another Silly Love Story, by Louise Wynn: a mismatched man and woman grapple with the conventions of romantic comedy; Tru Adoration, by Katie Bennett: a romantic comedy about love and dance; A Day at the Office, by Fred Cooprider: a novice at love seeks advice from an old veteran of the love wars; Formulas Over Drinks, by John McDonald: Toby is at a crossroads in his life when Jake throws him a lifeline in the way of friendship; and, last but not least, Eternity or Longer by Stan Matthews: as his mind fades in old age, Fred has become convinced that the love of his life, Darla, is actually a spirit visiting him from the afterlife. Join us for romance and a wonderful cast of characters as we explore what it means to love and be loved in the modern age.
PDXP ZOOM INstant Play Festival
Noon Friday, February 4, 2021
Produced by Kate Belden and Katie Bennett
This miniature festival-within-the-festival-within-the-festival will be action-packed with some of the freshest material in Fertile Ground 2022. How do we know this? Because the work is created on the brink of the submission deadline and the projects will be cast, written, rehearsed and performed live all within 48 hours! The virtual cousin to our popular Crazy Dukes event, ZOOM INstant is equally incredible. Think of it as theatre on a high wire with no net. Six talented playwrights will obtain four required prompts suggested by the audience—an action, theme, line of dialogue and prop—and randomly assigned a small cast of actors. The playwrights will then write, rehearse and direct their 10-minute plays for performance 48 hours later as a raw, live event in one collective take. Fertile Ground will present the inevitably wild results of this spectacular event as part of the PDXP Lunchtime Series. Participating playwrights who have hopped aboard the crazy train include Maren Anderson, Valerie Asbel, Irvin Jones, Peter Korn, Stan Mathews and John McDonald. It’s close-up, zoom-by, crazy creativity—guaranteed amazing.
The events above were made possible thanks to donations by the producers and PDXP admin team members listed above as well as PDXP Lead Producer for Fertile Ground Karen Polinsky, assistant producer Brad Bolchunos, and editor Ajai Tripathi.
Additional Festival Offerings
Among the festival projects involving playwrights who have worked with us in the past are Cosmogonos by Ajai Tripathi, Crossroads at Chambersburg by Fred Cooprider, Figaro’s Follies by John Freed, Heart of Stone by Alisher Khasanov and Karen Polinsky, Le RondeStorm by LineStorm Playwrights, PLEDGE: The Musical by Don Merrill, Pledging Allegiance by Johanna Courtleigh, Quality of Death by Ruth Jenkins, and Space Rangers by Peter Armetta, to name but a few.
Thank you for your interest and support of new work through the Portland Area Theatre Alliance, Fertile Ground, and PDX Playwrights. We can’t wait to see you online at our “festival within the festival!”
